The present invention relates to timepieces such as wrist watches and clocks and, more particularly, to a timepiece that displays the number of minutes, days and years remaining in a person's life based on actuarial data.
Life expectancy has been a major concern of people throughout the ages. Insurance companies routinely develop and publish actuarial tables to indicate the average lifespans of certain people in specified groups. This actuarial table data is based on a number of factors, such as overall health of the individual, whether a person smokes cigarettes, consumes excessive alcohol, and genetic factors such as family histories of known diseases and recorded lifespans.
Timepieces that count backwards are also known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,687 issued to Gander, discloses a timepiece that includes an analog display. One of a plurality of characters on a data entry dial can be selected to enable an associated coded character on the periphery of a rotatable wheel. A stem is coupled to drive the wheel and to generate a data entry input signal, which is input to a memory associated with an alphanumeric display for visually indicating the entered information or the stored information. Although not disclosed in the reference, the aforementioned patentee indicates that displayed information may include elapsed time from a selected starting time and countdown time remaining to a selected time in the future.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,625,175 issued to Smith discloses a device which measures the open circuit voltage condition of a storage battery to give a reading in increments of time of the remaining useful life of the battery. Although the system does not incorporate the use of an electronic timer, the concept of measuring time backwards is shown.
Heretofore, there has been no way of automatically monitoring one's own life expectancy, based on factors such as actuarial tables, contemporaneous events and heredity.
More precisely, it would be advantageous to predict a person's life expectancy based on factors including health-related activities, such as consuming fatty foods, over-eating, stress, jogging, exercising, etc.
It would also be advantageous to provide a timepiece that would allow one to be apprised of the probable time remaining in one's life.
It would also be advantageous to monitor the probable remaining time left in one's life on a yearly, hourly, and even seconds basis.
It would also be advantageous to provide a lifetime monitoring timepiece that could be resettable by the user.
It would also be advantageous to provide a timepiece for estimating a lifespan of a user, which is settable by programming given events in the user's life.